Search Results for: United Nations

BY PHILIP FINE

UNITED States national and regional administrations need to better link their federal and state food safety rules, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences. In their report called Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food, the official Washington think tank recommends that a national plan be drawn up that would integrate the information on pathogens that US Department of Agriculture and the national Food and Drug Administration gather through food sampling with public health agencies’ surveillance data on food-borne disease.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME four years after they began, negotiations for a deal over a geographical indication register for traditionally made wines and spirits are entering a decisive phase at the World Trade Organisation. The talks have taken so long because there is a fundamental difference in approach between new world producers led by the US who want such a register to amount to no more than a kind of voluntary data-base and the Europeans who see it as a means of ensuring world-wide legal protection for traditional appellations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS with many projects inspired by the start of the next 997 years and the last three, the framing of the United Nations’ (UN) Millennium Development Goals was an ambitious enterprise.

Imposing statistically measurable targets for international organisations and national governments in making improvements in global poverty, education, gender equality, health, the environment and education, they have proved tough to attain.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States Trade Representative office has published the details of the unconfirmed textile trade agreement that the USA has negotiated with Vietnam. It is available on the Internet at

http://www.ustr.gov/regions/asia-pacific/2003-04-25-Vietnam-textiles-summary.pdf…

BY MARK ROWE
THE RUSSIAN agriculture minister Alexei Gordeyev is flying to the United States later this month (May) to secure a formal end the poultry dispute between the two countries. Russia banned US chicken imports last year over health concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced that it will spend Euro 69 million this year on a major overhaul of Serbia’s Nikola Tesla A5 and B1 thermal power plants, as well as funding training programmes and making management improvements in its energy sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RUSSIA has unambiguously staked its claim to territorial rights to wide swathes of the Arctic Ocean between its northern coast and the North Pole, waters that are currently frozen for most of the year, but which may become more navigable thanks to global warming.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation (ILO) has released a detailed report warning that the globalisation of the world’s utilities is leading to job losses in the energy and water sectors, with only the roll-out of new infrastructure and services in developing countries likely to generate employment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has said it wants to launch quickly into an analysis of sites in Iraq targeted with weapons containing depleted uranium (DU), now that the US-UK led invasion appears to be winding up.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Development Programme is implementing a plan to build 15 digester units to generate biogas from animal manure for home heating and cooking in and around Kazakhstan’s second city Karaganda, population 600,000. The UNDP says that the pilot project exploits an ancient technology that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago.…